Prophecy - Страница 54

‘And thank you for conveying my lord Castelnau’s views in your own unique way,’ Henry adds, as if he is holding his breath. Mendoza only laughs, and pushes his chair back.

I sense that my performance has ruptured the tension in the room; people are fidgeting, as if impatient to leave. The candles have burned almost to stumps; I cannot guess at the hour, but it grows late, and it is time for my finale. I clasp my face with my hand, then slump forward on the table over my crooked arm, allowing my mouth to hang open.

‘Is he all right?’ says Philip Howard, after a moment. A hand tentatively nudges me.

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ Henry Howard explodes. ‘They have no self-control, you see. It’s what I’ve always said. Indulging the pleasures of the flesh.’ He curls his mouth around these last words with evident revulsion.

I wonder who he means by ‘they’. Dominicans? Heretics? Italians? Then Marie’s voice, sharp and impatient:

‘How are we supposed to get him back to Salisbury Court in this state?’

‘Well, I’m not carrying him,’ Courcelles says quickly. ‘Besides, he’d likely vomit in the boat.’

There is some conferring in low voices; I resist the temptation to open an eye. Finally, Philip says, ‘There is nothing else for it. He must stay here and sleep it off. We have room. He can walk back to the embassy tomorrow when he’s in better shape.’

Inwardly, I give a little cry of triumph.

‘I could almost pity him, poor fool,’ Howard says. Though I cannot see the sneer on his face, I can hear it and picture it vividly. ‘He has disgraced himself and the ambassador. That will be the last time he is offered any kind of responsibility. The man thinks he’s untouchable with King Henri’s patronage.’

‘That will not benefit him much longer.’ Mendoza’s voice is thick with scorn.

‘Shh, Uncle — he might be able to hear you.’

‘Him? He’s out cold. Get him upstairs, someone. Fowler — you at least seem sober. Would you mind?’

A scraping of chairs, followed by a crunching sound, as someone steps on the fragments of broken glass scattered around my chair. I feel a pair of strong arms grasp me around the torso.

‘Come on, you can’t stay here,’ Fowler says gently, hoisting me to my feet; there is a kind of tenderness in the way he lifts my limp arm and wraps it around his shoulder. Henry Howard, I note as I dare to open my eyes a bleary crack, stands with his arms folded, his lips pressed together, the model of disapproving piety. But Henry Howard has his own weaknesses, and tonight I intend to discover them and bring back evidence.

‘Howard,’ Mendoza hisses, and through half-closed lids I see him gesture abruptly to the door.

By watching the progress of my feet and Fowler’s through my eyelashes, I make a note, as I am bundled along a passage and up a flight of stairs, of the way back to the corridor with the dining room. Philip Howard goes officiously before us with a candle to show the way, while I lean on Fowler’s shoulders and allow myself to be half-dragged, half-carried to a room where I am dropped on to a bed.

‘Will he be all right, do you think?’ Philip asks nervously, from the doorway.

‘He’ll be right enough after a sleep,’ says Fowler, sitting on the bed beside me and pulling off my boots one after the other. ‘A jug of good wine never killed anyone.’ He rolls me on to my side; I allow him to move me like a dead weight. ‘You might give him a piss pot in case he wakes in the night,’ he adds, matter of factly.

Some scuffling follows; I hear footsteps in the corridor, and eventually someone — presumably the earl himself, since the servants have all been dismissed — places a pot beside the bed. It is by now safe to assume that I will never receive a return invitation from the earl and countess.

‘Don’t worry — I’ll make sure he is comfortable,’ Fowler says; the earl murmurs something and from the other side of the room I hear footsteps die away. I decide the best policy is to feign a state of unconsciousness. Fowler leans across the bed and lays a hand on my shoulder.

‘Quite a performance, Bruno,’ he breathes, his mouth almost touching my ear. ‘And risky. What is it you want?’

I open my eyes to find his face barely inches from mine, looking for all the world as if he is about to kiss me.

‘Whatever I can find,’ I whisper. He regards me for a moment and in the candlelight his face is full of doubt; I can see he thinks this an unnecessary danger. Resentment tightens in my chest; Fowler is a partner of sorts in this enterprise, but it is not for him to direct me or question my methods.

‘That list of havens would be a prize indeed,’ he whispers back, eventually. ‘But Howard took it with him — you can be sure he will keep it somewhere secure. And you could mar everything if you are caught.’

I am well aware of this, but having him point it out only makes me angry.

‘I will not be caught,’ I whisper. ‘And if you delay too long here we will rouse their suspicions.’

‘Henry and Mendoza have retired together for a private conversation,’ he hisses. ‘I would give much to eavesdrop on that. But for God’s sake be careful.’

‘Trust me.’

He squeezes my shoulder.

‘Good luck, then, Bruno. You are bolder than I, that is certain.’

The candle is blown out, the door clicks shut, and I roll on to my back, grinning to myself in the dark, alert and waiting.

Chapter Fifteen

Arundel House, London

3rd October, Year of Our Lord 1583

After perhaps two hours have passed like an eternity, I sit upright and listen. The silence that has fallen over the house has an apprehensive quality, a muffled stillness that feels tense with expectation. Or perhaps this is just how it seems to me, after lying on my back in the dark for so many slowly turning minutes, ears straining for the slightest sound that would betray anyone awake or abroad in the household. But now there is nothing; only the intermittent yelping of sea birds over the river and the wail of an occasional fox. Cautiously, I swing my legs over the side of the bed and immediately kick the piss pot Philip Howard left for me; it rattles like a series of shots fired on the wooden boards as it settles and I freeze, heart pounding, but the house makes no response. I wonder how far I am from the private rooms of the family, or the servants’ quarters and who might be awake to hear me. It also occurs to me, as I rise and pad across to pull back one of the wooden shutters on the window, that they might leave the white dog to patrol the house during the night. Although the dog is probably in worse shape than me at this moment, I reflect, rubbing my temple. I have a pounding headache, but I feel wide awake, my nerves primed.

The candle and tinderbox are still safe in the pocket of my breeches. Without my boots, my feet in my underhose make no sound, though the boards are uneven and complain at every step. I open the chamber door, first a crack and then enough to slip into the passageway outside. Nothing stirs; as I feel my way back towards the staircase, I imagine I can hear the collective rise and fall of breath as the household sleeps. If anyone crosses my path before I reach my destination, I can always pretend I am still half drunk and in search of a drink of water or the close-stool.

The corridor that leads back past the dining room is deserted; though I keep my tread as light as possible, there is no one to hear. The door at the end of the corridor is closed and as I approach it the blood drums faster in my throat; if it should be locked, and I am unable to turn the lock with the blade of my knife — tucked, as always, into my waistband — then this whole performance will have been in vain.

But the door opens smoothly, so easily that I half expect to find someone inside the library waiting for me, having guessed at my intention. Instead I find myself alone in a rectangular room lined on all four sides with wooden stacks of books and manuscripts, interrupted at either end where two arched windows face one another. Pale moonlight slants through one of these, tracing faint shapes on the floor. With trembling fingers, barely able to believe that my luck will hold, I close the door as silently as I can, take out the candle and strike a flame, once, twice; on the third attempt it lights, and I move closer to the books, trying to deduce Philip Howard’s method of classification. Or perhaps the library is really Henry Howard’s; the young earl does not strike me as much of a scholar. Henry might have moved his collection of books to Arundel House when his family lost their own seat. Either way, it gives me a frisson of pleasure to be poking about in the Howards’ library without permission, just as I believe Henry Howard to have done in Dee’s house.

The circle of light quivers along the lines of books as I prowl the length of the shelves, knowing all the time that the book I hope to find will not be openly displayed, if it is here at all. But if Dee is right and it was Henry Howard who ordered the lost Hermes book to be stolen from him in Oxford all those years ago, then it is most likely to be hidden somewhere in his own library. My best hope is that I have enough time undisturbed to search for some sign of it.

Even a cursory glance at the stacks shows that most of the volumes collected here are uncontroversial; works of classical scholarship, theology and poetry such as any gentleman might be expected to be acquainted with, chosen more for the finery of their bindings, it seems, than for their content. But the long wall facing the door intrigues me; it has no windows, yet from the layout as I came in, it seems to me that this room should mark the end of the east wing of the house. Why, then, does it have no windows to the outside to increase the light, when this would clearly be an advantage in a room intended for reading? I move carefully along the length of this wall, and as I reach the furthest of the stacks, the flame of my candle gutters violently and threatens to cough itself out altogether. I hold out my other hand to feel a sharp draught, which appears to be coming from behind the wooden bookcase. This is curious, since the stacks have the appearance of being built into the wall. Bending to the floor, I can see faint curving marks scratched in the boards at one side and my chest gives a wild lurch; trying to hold the candle steady, I grope with frantic fingers up the panel that joins the stack to the corner of the room. Built into the lattice-work carving on this panel are small indentations; about halfway up I insert my fingertips into one of these and find it is cut deeper than the others. Feeling blindly, I touch metal; there seems to be some kind of latch. I probe as best I can until I think I have released it; the wooden stack shifts almost imperceptibly and with my breath held fast, I begin to pull it towards me, away from the wall. It is heavy, but moves with surprising ease and I realise that it is built on a hinge, carefully weighted; it swings out just far enough for a person to slip into the gap behind, where a small door is built into the wall, invisible when the shelf stack is in place.